The Undertaker and the Match Girl
by Decadent Meerkat
Summary: Hans Christian Andersen's character is found freezing to death, one New Years Eve ... on the doorstep of the Undertaker.


**The Undertaker and the Match Girl**

Hands in pockets, I hurried back to the shop. The snow had started again, and was piling up all around, raw material for tomorrow's snowballs. Definitely a night to be indoors, I thought, shivering. I burrowed my head into the lamb-wool of my scarf. Wonderful thing, that scarf. Claudia knitted it herself, years ago, to keep me warm on those rare occasions the old Earl left his study and she had to postpone our liaisons. Those were the days.

Some benevolent fool had dropped lumps of coal along the street. Scattered across the whitened cobblestones, the lumps looked like raisins dropped in cream. Two enterprising urchins in matching cloth caps were stuffing them into their pockets, probably intending to cite a sick mother if interrogated by the police. I was not the police, but they stared at me anyway.

"Happy New Year, boys," I said, with a grin. At least I thought they were boys. One never could tell with the scrawny street children of London. "Care for a toffee?"

With mouths gaping like fishes and eyes like pudding plates, they backed away and dashed down an alley, fast as their stick-thin legs could carry them. Not a peep of greeting uttered, and I'd only offered them a toffee. I shook my head, and scooped the coal into my hat.

"Waste not, want not," I explained to a passing cat.

...

The lamppost outside the shop was encrusted with ice, and the footpaths were tricky as a politician. There'd be a few accidents on the streets tonight; brandy-soaked revellers and slippery stone rarely make a safe combination, and I'd always counted myself fortunate to witness portly gentlemen doing accidental acrobatics. There'd be a nice uptick in business when I reopened on Tuesday, and unlike my former friends, still no need to work overtime.

Only then did I notice the dark bundle squatting on my doorstep. I peered closer. It was a child, a girl I guessed, wrapped in a blanket, and shaking with cold.

I bent down. "Hello, there," I said. "Fancy a toffee?"

This one didn't run, just chattered her teeth. Poor thing was freezing to death.

I could leave her, I thought. Collect her in the morning, and get to work with the arsenic and formaldehyde before the Bobbies show up and ask questions. Except that'd mean she'd be all bent over, twisted, and stiff... no, that'd be disgusting. I could never talk to her like that.

"You'd best come in," I said. "A nice cup of tea will do you good."

She was too frozen to move, so I carried her into the shop, and turned on the gas-lamp. Light as a feather she was, half in and half out of this world. Her fingers clutched a box of Bryant & May matches. Once in the light, I took a good look at her.

It was indeed a girl, and no more than nine at that. Sandy hair, grey eyes, nose and cheeks like a porcelain doll... and, yes, the tell-tale phossy jaw. Puffy and swollen, this was a match girl all right, one of those poor creatures who slaved fourteen hour days having their brains and faces eaten by factory chemicals. Vile stuff white phosphorous, the sort of thing that'd make demons embarrassed. To such as this girl, death came as a relief. Yes, my friends, the sweet beauty of death shall set us free.

The girl still hadn't spoken a word, and, despite the discounts available, seemed not the least interested in my shopfront coffins. I took her through the rear door into my living quarters, where I plopped her down at the kitchen table. It doubled as a work bench: waste not, want not.

Though simple and austere, my kitchen could get cosy; I doffed my overcoat and scarf. The hat full of coal also proved a right headache. Luckily, the range needed topping up, so I dropped in the lumps with a sizzling thump. The embers beneath glowed ruby-warm and comforting, and little sparks of orange flame started a merry dance.

I don't like fire. It feeds on destruction, leaving behind nought but ashes and memories. Few realise until too late that we need to preserve what we have, lest we lose it forever. But that night fire was our mutual friend, a New Years Truce if you will, and I think my guest knew it as well as I.

"Now, you'll be wanting tea."

I rummaged through the cupboards beneath the sink. I had proper crockery somewhere. New Years is one of those times you have to bring out the best for your guests, and when one has spent as many years alone as I, you realise the importance of special occasions. Alas, there were only the beakers. At least I'd properly cleaned these ones. Or I thought I had.

I shrugged, and held up the glass to the light. It still looked a bit misty. "This might take a while. Fancy if I show you something while we wait for the kettle to boil?"

The match girl said nothing. But at least she looked at ease. Her teeth had stopped chattering.

"Don't fall asleep now," I said. "Stay up till midnight, and I'll give you this whole bag of toffees. That'd be nice, wouldn't it?"

I waved the bag in the air, as if conducting. The girl's head nodded forward.

"Excellent." I replaced the bag, and hunted around for an oil lantern. "Mind if I borrow some matches?"

...

No-one but I and my special guests had ever seen this particular cellar – not the Earl, not Lau, not Aleister. This wasn't about informing and schemes, nor even was it about science and knowledge, though I'm passingly fond of all of those. It was about art, in its most pure form.

Using the lantern to navigate, I lit the series of candles around the walls. Bit by bit, their flickering light revealed the contents of the room in all its glory. Two dozen of my most beautiful corpses were arranged, positioned like statues amid an interior rock garden. The poses varied; some danced, some sat, some copulated. I looked at them, and my heart beat faster. Each corpse was a product of the highest-quality embalming. For these I used only the purest chemicals and concentrates available, paid for by organ sales to a very grateful and very silent medical profession.

When I had finished with the candles, I retreated to the door, and held up the girl in one hand, and the unshuttered lantern in the other.

"They have glass eyes," I whispered. "Eye tissue decays, and there's nothing I can do. So I replace it with glass. Thus their beauty lasts longer."

My collection was a strike against the greatest of all enemies, the tyranny of time itself. The notion that something with a beginning must also have an end. Yet, until I found a way to revive my corpses, I was fighting a losing battle. The end had come for these creatures; all I had done was hold back decay. I needed a true continuation...

But my guest was getting heavy in my arms, and we were now into the new year.

...

The little match girl lay in her pine coffin in the main display room, beautiful as I could make her. Hiding phossy jaw isn't easy, what with the incisions for draining pus. There were no mourners, no family either, though I asked a local Reverend to come round to the shop, and say a few words over the casket. The man was a Chambers, lacking his noble cousin's hedonism, but every bit as self-important.

"It's just like Hans Christian Andersen's story," he said afterwards, over bone biscuits and tea. "She's been taken to a better place, to rest peacefully in the arms of the Father."

"Anywhere is a better place than this, Reverend," I said. "That's why I have so much work to do."

Chambers smiled. "As do we all. My collar binds me to the Faith, and as such I must spread the message of salvation wherever I can."

"Reverend, I find you an amusing fellow in small doses, but if you believe half the things you spout, I hope one day that collar chokes you."

"Pardon?"

"Sorry, just thinking aloud. Eternal Life and everything." I grinned. "Fancy a toffee?"

...

My candle-lit cellar has a new tenant. Some may not think her as pretty as the others, small and scrawny as she is, and with that horrible jaw, but I wouldn't trade her for the world.


End file.
